482 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL.. 



bee-hives, and was on the point of start-- 

 ing to see them, when an acquaintance 

 said : " Oh, you need not go over there 

 to see those hives, for there are no bees 

 in them. There were four months of 

 drouth last Summer, and the bees 

 starved to death. They belonged to the 

 doctor who lives over there, and he said 

 he was not going to feed them ; that if 

 they could not make their own living, 

 they might die." A little food would 

 have tided them over until the rains 

 came, and they would have paid it back 

 with more than compound interest. 



Wherever you live— in the North, 

 South, East or West — do not let your 



ony through the new hive. A little 

 block is placed into the open space be- 

 tween the two hives, so that the bees 

 cannot escape from that way." 



There, it will be seen that the bees, 

 when they go to and return from the 

 fields, must run the entire length of the 

 new hive to reach their combs, and then 

 must work their bodies down through 

 more or less perforated metal to find the 

 entrance to their brood-nest. Now, is 

 such an arrangement practical ? I con- 

 tend that it is not ; and when I gave Mr. 

 Pratt the " cue " to this device, I so ex- 

 pressed myself. 



Then there is another equally as 



PratVs Self-Hiver. 



bees starve for want of a little food. 

 There are times when a penny's worth 

 of sugar would save the life of a val- 

 uable colony, for they may die within a 

 few hours of plenty. — Prairie Farmer. 



Automatic Self-Hiyers. 



HENRY ALLEY. 



Since I described the first self-hiver, 

 several enterprising bee-keepers have 

 made an attempt to improve upon my 

 arrangement by all sorts of devices 

 which they claim as an improvement on 

 mine ; such claims were founded on 

 theory, as not one of the self-hivers that 

 these friends had "invented," had been 

 tested on a bee-hive. 



In a recent issue of Gleanings, Mr. E. 

 L. Pratt described a device which he 

 claims will do the work to the satisfac- 

 tion of all. Well, perhaps it will, but 

 since giving it a little thought, I have 

 discovered some very serious objections 

 to such an arrangement. Mr. Pratt 

 says : 



"The hive to receive the swarm is 

 placed in front of the colony expected to 

 swarm. The front ends of both bottom- 

 boards are abutted so as to form a con- 

 tinuous passage from the swarming col- 



serious objection to the Pratt swarmer. 

 Mr. Pratt places a piece of perforated 

 metal at the entrance of the nqw hive to 

 prevent the queen from going witii the 

 bees, little thinking that the same de- 

 vice would detain the drones as well as 

 the queen. Now, suppose there is an 

 out-apiary in which the Pratt swarmer 

 is used, and which the owner visits but 

 once a 'week ? One-half, if not all the 

 colonies in the yard on which the 

 swarmer is used would be dead, as the 

 drones in hives (where the drones are 

 abundant), would so clog the entrance 

 that no bees could get in or out, conse- 

 quently the colony would be smothered. 



If Mr. Pratt's swarmer will work as 

 he claims, I know of a much better and 

 simpler method of hiving swarms auto- 

 matically by the same arrangement of 

 the hives as Mr. P. recommends. All 

 the inside arrangement of the per- 

 forated metal that Mr. P. uses, can be 

 left out, so that the passage-way to the 

 colony in the rear hive will be entirely 

 free of any obstruction. Place a drone 

 and queen trap at the entrance of the 

 new hive, and when a swarm issues the 

 queen will be trapped. 



Now, all who use the " trap " know 

 about the arrangement provided for the 

 escape of the queen when the apiarist is 

 absent, or a swarm is not desired. All 



